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December 1st, 2008
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Street smarts

An international gathering of graffiti artists in Prague
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
October 1st, 2008 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
A Moebius strip of rapacious development covers the big wall near Národní třída.
NAMES: The First International Street Art Festival in Prague


at Galerie Trafačka Ends Oct. 13. Kurta Konráda 1, Prague 9. Open Tues., Wed., Fri. 3-7 p.m., Thurs. 3-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. For a list of outdoor locations, check www.namesfest.net/lokace
The NAMES Fest marks the first attempt to bring internationally recognized street artists to Prague to liven up the walls and neglected public spaces around town — legally.
The festival is co-hosted and co-organized by Galerie Trafačka, a lone, ragged outpost for local street artists that was founded by Jan Kaláb (aka Point), widely considered to be the leading street artist in the country. NAMES was inspired by a similar festival in Berlin, and it aims to link local artists with the international street art scene.
For most people, street art is graffiti, but the forms are distinct. To clear up popular misconceptions, festival organizers invited more than 30 international recognized names in contemporary street art, ranging from Sweden and St. Petersburg to Brazil, to create pieces in Prague. Original works were also created by a dozen or so of their Czech counterparts, including Point, Cap crew, Masker, Pasta (all from Prague) and Geno (from Poděbrady).
Technically, graffiti became “street art” in the late 1970s and early ’80s, during the founding days of hip-hop in New York City. The classic forms of street art now seen on urban walls and subway trains around the world are not very different from the earliest “wild style” graffiti that sprouted in the South Bronx and Brooklyn.
However, the most well-known street artists today have transcended the wild style by creating works that can’t be confined in a gallery, for reasons of both space and aesthetics. These are done in a variety of media — paints, pastels, posters, stickers and other materials —for the purpose of engaging viewers in public spaces.
For the NAMES Fest, all of the artists gathered in Prague at the end of August and created the works over a 10-day period.
At Galerie Trafačka, a large building down the street from pristine Sazka Arena that’s been smothered in colorful street art and graffiti, Zezao (from Sao Paulo, Brazil) has a room filled with trash, wine bottles and a bum asleep on the floor. There is a small video in which the camera moves through canals and rivers; a ray of light blue graffiti across one wall seems to be the only sign of hope in this scene.
Honet (from Paris) has a commanding wall in green and black geometric shapes, but his documentation of other pieces, including his bombs on a U.S. military tank in an underground bunker, is even more interesting. On the other side of the gallery, “King of the Line” is a group project presenting a video of graffiti fiends moving in a fast-forward frenzy, leaving a trail of chaotic lines sprayed in black. The lines are in the gallery space as documentation.
Other pieces are scattered around the neighborhood, including a five-story mural by Loomit (from Germany) that was inspired by the tensions between the United States and Russia over Kosovo and North Ossetia.
At the Palmovka metro station, there is a semicircular wall soaked in clouds of bright yellow and blue spray, dripping lines down to the ground like heavy rain. Another version of this piece, more striking for its sheer size and radiance, is on the main facade of Trafačka.
The most visible piece created during the festival spans the facades of two buildings near Národní třída: It’s an infinity loop of green tanks and yellow bulldozers — partners in crime against nature and humanity. As with a few other pieces, there is no name signed to this one.
A shorter-term display was installed two blocks away from Trafačka, in Hale C. Documentation of some of the excellent works there is available on the NAMES web site (Namesfest.net), including a lyrical one by the Rebel Ink crew (from Milan) with red and black calligraphic swirls, an outrageous installation by Pasta (from Prague) with a real wooden bus bench and a bench/billboard construction (both dragged in from the street), and a long, wild-style Kupka-esque wall by Prague-based Point in the pioneering Modernist’s favored tones of red and blue.
There is also photo documentation of a project called “Private Thoughts for Public Spaces,” in which the artists collect anonymous secrets and engrave them on public spaces in Sweden and the United Kingdom. After collecting secrets in Prague during the festival, the artists promise to include the city in their next edition.
A handy map of the street pieces is provided at Trafačka, as well as online. But some of the bigger international names will still be elusive on a street-art excursion in Prague — as perhaps they should be.
If some of the top international stars of the scene didn’t make it to Prague this time, their Midas touch was at least appropriated by others, adding more sparkle to this already Golden City.
Tony Ozuna can be reached at
features@praguepost.com

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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